2014 Centre for eResearch Annual Report

<p>
2014 has been an extremely
busy year for the Centre for eResearch. In partnership with NeSI, we have added
some more hardware into our High Performance Computing facility (the Pan
cluster), and a lot more researchers, projects and applications into our portfolio.
We passed the landmark of 50 million CPU hours delivered and used by
researchers since our record keeping began in January 2012.</p><p><br></p><p>Over 50 scholars have now passed the mark of
using over 500,000 CPU hours in support of their research. In many branches of
research, access to massive amounts of computing power is now a prerequisite
for those who aspire to publish in quality journals, and this trend is set to
continue as more fields adapt to the opportunities afforded by large-scale
analysis and simulation. These computing resources have been used to enable
much diverse research, from archaeology to zoology; from cosmology to
nano-materials. The Centre’s offerings have grown too. We now
provide a Research Virtual Machine (RVM) service that supports interactive
research applications, both on Linux and Windows, we also run a large-scale
visualisation facility (using 20 displays working in synchrony) and we offer a
variety of workshops to up-skill researchers in eResearch and high performance
computing.</p><p><br></p>
<p>The report presented here details some of
these achievements, showcasing a small cross-section of the projects we have
worked on, providing metrics to show the extent that we have raised the
computational capability of researchers across the University, and lists the
research outcomes that have resulted from these efforts.</p>
<p>In 2015, we look forward to beginning new work
to better support research data, to the expansion of our RVM and visualisation
capabilities and to a continued partnership with the refunded NeSI. Get in
touch with us if you face computational challenges with your research.</p><p><br></p>
<p> </p>
<p><b>PROFESSOR MARK
GAHEGAN</b></p>
<p><b>Director, Centre for eResearch, The
University of Auckland</b></p>